The thrilling extra-inning clash that saw the Dodgers overcome the Blue Jays by one run drew a combined 51 million spectators across the United States, Canadian, and Japanese territories. Major League Baseball stated this marks the most-watched World Series Game 7 since the 1991 contest between the Minnesota Twins and Braves.
Television Ratings Breakdown
Last Saturday’s memorable game drew over 27 million audience members on Fox Sports channels, Fox Deportes and their digital services. Per Nielsen, it was the second most-watched broadcast of the previous week.
It additionally stands as the most-watched World Series game since the 2017 final game between the Dodgers and Houston Astros, which averaged 29.07 million. This represents a sixteen percent increase compared to the last Game 7 featuring the Washington Nationals and Astros, which drew 23.19M.
In the weekly rankings, Game 6 placed fourth, Game 4 ranked 7th, Game 5 was eighth, and Game 3 finished in 13th place.
International Audience Figures
In the Canadian market, the game drew 11.6 million viewers on Sportsnet and the French TVA Sports. This was the highest-rated English broadcast in Canada since the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the final contest started at 9 PM local time, it drew 12 million. This came after last Friday’s sixth game – in which Fall Classic MVP Yamamoto allowed a single run in six innings – averaged 13.1M spectators, making it the most-watched World Series matchup on a single network in the country.
Overall Totals and Trends
The full seven-game World Series recorded over 15.7 million audience members on the Fox network, a 2% increase from last year’s Dodgers versus Yankees series. This represents the initial instance since 2015 and 2016 that the World Series has seen audience increases for two straight years.
Counting the Game 1 broadcast on Univision, the complete US viewership was 16.1M. The total Fall Classic viewership in Japan was 9.7M and 8.1 million in the Canadian market.
The full MLB Postseason on Fox, FS1 and FS2 drew 8.09M viewers, an 8% increase over last year and Fox’s best playoff ratings since the 2017 season.
Major League Baseball stated that the World Series was televised in 203 nations and regions by forty-four media partners in 16 various languages.
